Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass

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Bass, both largemouth and smallmouth, are fabulous fly-rod fish. Neither are particularly easy to catch on flies, and both put up a great fight.

Largemouth Bass

America's favorite gamefish, the largemouth is available just about everywhere in the lower 48 states. It's the fish next door, and it's been the object of American fly fishers since the founding of the Republic. Indeed, we have articles and journal entries dating back to colonial times discussing tactics and techniques for fly fishing for largemouths. Mary Orvis Marbury's Famous Flies and Their Histories published in 1892, lists a whole bunch of flies intended for largemouths. True, most of those patterns were just adaptations of classic salmon flies. But it shows how popular the largemouth was with fly fishers even back then that specific flies were being designed and recommended for these fish.

And of course, there's Henshall's Book Of The Black Bass, published in 1881. Not surprisingly, Henshall's fly box contained mostly trout flies and salmon flies that had simply been enlarged for use in bass fishing. (The eponymous Henshall Bug wasn't developed until after he'd published the first edition.)

Today we have a growing list of flies and bugs designed specifically for largemouths. (You can find a few of my favorite patterns here.) For me, deer-hair bugs are the apex of the bass-bugger's art. They're made from (mostly) natural materials, and can run the gamut from imitative (frogs, mice, etc.) to goofy and surreal (Texas Two-Step, Burbler, and so on).

Some anglers find deer-hair bass bugs too hard and too time consuming to tie. I'd beg to differ--and not just because I wrote the book on tying these things: Bass Bug Basics. Largemouths love to get in, under, and alongside the most tangled and nasty obstructions. If you want to catch them, you have to cast into places where there's a good chance your bug will get hung up and lost. It's much easier on both the mind and the wallet to heave 15 minutes worth of effort (and 15-cents worth of materials) back into the thickets than to pussyfoot around the edges because you don't want to lose a $5 store-bought bug.

Despite my affinity for deer-hair bugs, there are also a lot of other patterns that work great. Happily, more and more tiers are taking their cues from some of the soft-plastic lures that have proven so devastating. As a result, we're slowly developing an arsenal of bass flies that allow us to effectively cope with a wide range of conditions.

Smallmouth Bass

Smallmouths are not as widely distributed as largemouths, but that takes nothing away from their qualities as a gamefish. Certainly the smalllmouth is my favorite fish, and I'm willing to drive great distances based merely on the rumor of big smallies.

Because of its second-class citizen status, the smallmouth has not been the subject of nearly as much attention from anglers or their supporting industries as the largemouth. You can find zillions of lures and flies designed specifically for largemouths, but the pickings are slim if you're looking for something made explicitly for catching smallmouths. Luckily for us smallmouth fanatics, these fish usually aren't too finicky, and we can use lots of existing patterns with great success.

As you might have guessed, I have a few of my own favorite smallmouth flies. In fact, my smallmouth fly selection is stunningly small--only a half-dozen or so patterns. I've found these flies to work everywhere from Tennessee to Minnesota and from the Carolinas to Maine.